Month: October 2014

I’ve been a bad blogger of late! I don’t think I’ve made a post in about a month – but I do have a perfectly legitimate reason! This September I started my teacher training course, and have been commuting to Leeds through the week, so when I’ve not been absolutely exhausted from the drive, I’ve had a huge pile of assignments to plough through. And now that I’ve got a placement school, I’ll soon have teaching to focus on! So not only has my blog been neglected, but so has my garden!

As a quick break though from uni work (lesson planning and progression maps and lesson objectives and differentiation……) I hacked around in my beds for a while, and then took some photos. If you look at the top photo, you can see my two beds in the centre and to the left – but what’s that, to the right? That metal frame? Could it be… the base to a greenhouse?!

To recap! It was our annual village show a couple of weekends ago, and so I abandoned all uni work in order to dig up all my carrots, beetroots, onions and whatever else I could find in order to enter everything. As a first time grower my expectations were not high.

OK, that’s a lie. My expectations were very high, and thus were dashed on the ground like a spilled tray of something small and seedy. Which sounds quite dodgy. But basically, the standards in my village are so high, potentially because most of the other contenders are, ah, how can I say it? ‘More mature’, with many more years’ experience of growing stuff.

As it stands now, my beds are looking a bit bare and unloved. (Hmm, there’s a pun in there somewhere!)

Look how scruffy the edge looks! There’s another job to do…

Mum kindly planted out a load of leeks for me a few weeks ago, and my previously caterpillar-stripped kale have fluffed up again, so they look nice and bountiful again. I then sowed a load of cabbages, cauliflowers (second time’s a charm?), some more kale (because I looove it) and some fancy sprouting broccoli that doesn’t really look like broccoli. So the left hand bed may look a bit sad but it is full of potential!

This is the “chard” bed – they seem to be HUGE in the left side and not so huge in the right side. Hmmm…

Different story in the right bed. I had let a few chards go to seed and they went out of control, so today I hacked them up and the last of the lettuces. That bed is now full of about three rows of rainbow/rhubarb chard, and a few rangy carrots. Looks like we’ll be living on chard and kale through the winter!

I do have plans for that bed, somewhere, in the back of my mind, when I have a minute. Those plans are in a similar sort of dreamworld that involves revamping my blogs and recolonizing the sewing room as my study once again. Is that a flying pig?!

Oh no, wait! It’s a snoring Bilbo!

I also discovered some little surprises when I was weeding, and while I know some people will cry “weeds! weeds, dig them out!” I thought they were too lovely, and so have left them in.